In November 2017 the Board of Trustees commenced a month long period of Community Consultation with our community (whanau, students, staff, community and mana whenua) to gather feedback and ideas for input into our 2018 RAS Charter.
Consultation began with a public session in the town hall with all members of our community invited to participate. A paper-based and electronic version survey was provided for individuals to provide feedback.
As a Board, we wish to thank everyone for their contributions and share a summary of the feedback for you prior to the release of the school’s Charter document in March 2018.
In total there were 109 responses.
Questions
We prompted feedback by asking 15 questions:
- What is your relationship to the school?
- How long have you been associated in any capacity with the school?
- What are strengths in our community that can be reflected in our school?
- How can RAS better support parents/whanau to be involved in their student’s education and wellbeing?
- What is your future vision for RAS? Write down one or two words to describe how you see RAS in the future?
- What aspirations do you have for your son or daughter as a student at RAS? If you are not a parent please consider aspirations for students at RAS in general.
- How well do you understand the learning and assessment processes in place at RAS?
- If you are a parent of a middle or senior school student, how well do you understand the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) assessment process?
- What are the things RAS does well?
- What is the one thing you think RAS might do differently or better?
- In the next 3-5 years what would you like RAS to focus on?
- What is one thing that would make a difference to student learning, and wellbeing at RAS?
- In addition to academic achievement, what are the life skills and attitudes you want for our students?
- Would you like the opportunity to support the school more in any way, such as; working bees, fundraising, apprenticeships, internships, mentoring, donations?
- Is there anything else you’d like to suggest?
Key themes from the responses
As a Board, we were very pleased with the consistency of themes and ideas across responses. Most respondents considered the school’s key strength as providing a warm and caring environment that is supportive of a diverse range of cultures.
Here is a short summary of the key wishes expressed by respondents:
- A more holistic, student centred and dynamic curriculum anchored in Tikanga Maori and with more options for students
- Improved staff wellbeing and performance, Engaged teachers who are passionate about helping each student and the special qualities that they each have as individuals to be the best that they can be
- Better leadership and management with a clear vision
- Improved parent engagement and communication
- Improved organisation across the school
- Increased cohesiveness across all areas of the school.
- Improvement to school grounds and facilities
- A focus on environmental principles
- A focus on creative arts
- A focus on sports
- A safe school environment.
Where to from here?
The survey responses are directly informing and influencing both strategic and tactical goals within the charter document. This document will set out the board’s strategic leadership expectations for the next 3-5 years. It will outline the specific tasks that will be undertaken this year to work towards these strategic expectations. Once complete and signed off by the Ministry, the charter document will be published on the school website and we will invite all members of the community to read the document and provide feedback for the 2019 review.
We recognise that parent/whanau involvement and student wellbeing play such an important role in a students learning and we thank you all very much for your input.
If you have any questions at all in regards to this process please email: boardoftrustees@raglanarea.school.nz
Kind regards,
Joe Hassell
RAS Board Chair
Recent Comments